Category Archives: Jobs at Paperight

UPDATE 4 Sept 2013: Wow, that went fast. Excellent applications, and we’re excited to say that Shaun Swingler will be joining us in this role imminently. ALSO: If you’re a young aspiring filmmaker and want to volunteer to make your own videos about the Paperight network, let us know anyway. It won’t be an internship, but we’d love your help to tell great stories about making the world a bookier place.

At Paperight, we’re putting bookstores where they’ve never gone before, turning copy shops into the print-on-demand book shops of the future, from downtown Joburg to the rural Eastern Cape.

It would be awesome if we could show you videos of that, but we don’t have any. So, heck, come help us make some!

We need a brilliant young intern to join our team making videos and taking pictures of everything Paperight: including events (like our upcoming anthology launch), interviews with our copy shops and publishers, meetings, and website screencasts for our help site and blog. We want loads of footage, lots of powerful stills, and a bunch of beautifully edited videos that tell our story, and the stories of our members and beneficiaries.

You don’t have to have a specific qualification, but you’re probably someone who has a camera on your face more often than you don’t.

You’ll need to:

show us a range of videos you’ve already made;

be friendly, brave and smart, and

be able to get around, either by car or as a public-transport guru.

We offer interns a small monthly payment for internships over two to six months (depending on what works for you and us), a wonderful office environment, and the chance to learn a lot about the business of publishing. We promise you’ll finish smarter, stronger, and well-set for a career working on stuff that matters.

The internship will be based at our offices in Claremont, Cape Town.

To apply, send a covering letter to team@paperight.com telling us about you and explaining why you want to join us. Attach a CV or include a link to an online resumé (e.g. a full LinkedIn profile), and some video and photography of yours. The cover letter is really important, so make it count. If you have a blog or Twitter account, let us know – an outward-looking life, online or otherwise, scores extra points. We’ll then have a phone conversation with people we think may be a good fit.

There is no closing date. We’ll update this post to say when the position is filled.

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At Paperight, we’re passionate about increasing access to books. We want to put every book within walking distance of every home. That’s our big, hairy, audacious goal. To do it, we’re turning regular old copy shops into the book shops of the future. Walk into one, and get your book printed while you wait. Anywhere, from downtown Joburg to rural villages in the Eastern Cape.

So we help copy shops become great booksellers. We need a brilliant young intern to join our team doing that. We need to phone and visit outlets every day, finding out how they work and how we can help, for instance by distributing posters and flyers, helping them with our website, and working with community media to promote them.

You don’t have to have a specific degree or qualification for this. You do need to be friendly, brave, smart, and want to make the world a bookier place.

We offer interns a small monthly payment for internships over two to six months (depending on what works for you and us), a wonderful office environment, and the chance to learn a lot about the business of publishing. We promise you’ll finish smarter, stronger, and well-set for a career working on stuff that matters.

The internship will be based at our offices in Claremont, Cape Town.

To apply, send a covering letter to team@paperight.com telling us about you and explaining why you want to join us. Attach a CV or include a link to an online resumé (e.g. a full LinkedIn profile). We are much more interested in the cover letter, so make it count. If you have a blog or Twitter account, let us know – an outward-looking life, online or otherwise, scores extra points. We’ll then have a phone conversation with people we think may be a good fit.

There is no closing date. We’ll update this post to say when the position is filled.

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At Paperight, we’re passionate about increasing access to books. We want to put every book within walking distance of every home. That’s our big, hairy, audacious goal. To do it, we’re turning regular old copy shops into the book shops of the future. Walk into one, and get your book printed while you wait. Anywhere, from downtown Joburg to rural villages in the Eastern Cape.

So we put a lot into helping copy shops promote their book-selling services. We need your help to do that more and more. We need to be on the phone to outlets every day, finding out how they work and how we can help, getting them posters and flyers, and working with community media to promote them. We need your help drafting press releases that raise their profiles and ours, speaking to journalists, keeping track of what people say about us in the media, and making sure we are a useful part of the conversation.

You don’t have to have a marketing degree. If you’re gregarious, brave, super interested in the psychology of business, and want to help us make the world a much bookier place, you’ll fit right in.

We offer interns a small monthly payment for internships over two to six month periods (depending on what works for everyone), a wonderful office environment, and the chance to learn loads about the business of publishing. We promise you’ll finish smarter, stronger, and well-set for a career working on stuff that matters.

The internship will be at our offices in Claremont, Cape Town.

To apply, send a covering letter to team@paperight.com telling us about you and explaining why you want to join us. Attach a CV or include a link to an online resumé (e.g. a full LinkedIn profile). We are much more interested in the cover letter, so make it count. If you have a blog or Twitter account, let us know – an outward-looking life, online or otherwise, scores extra points. We’ll then have a phone conversation with people we think may be a good fit.

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UPDATE 22 Jan 2013: We’ve now filled this position, thanks to all who applied!

Paperight is changing the way publishing works, and we’re looking for a new recruit for our content team.

If you’re the person we’re looking for, your love for graphs, charts and data of all kinds means that you’re at home in Excel and its open source equivalents. You’ve also navigated around and used the backend of a website or blog before, and you understand HTML and CSS basics to the extent that you could edit and tidy up badly structured code.

You’re proficient in at least one Adobe Creative Suite program (preferably InDesign) and you love learning about new, more efficient processes. Your abilities are not limited to what you currently know: you’re the kind of person who will research new areas like typography and typesetting when you realise that they are esential to your job. You pride yourself on your ability to figure stuff out, and can troubleshoot your way out of a corner.

You also have a way with people. You know what makes for great customer service, and are comfortable managing these relationships via telephone, e-mail, or in person.

But, most importantly, you want to use your powers for good. Changing the world has always been on your checklist. You’ve read up on Paperight, and you share our vision: making every book available within walking distance of every home.

Apply by e-mailing team at paperight dot com. Your email cover letter is much, much more important than your CV. So make it count. Be honest and friendly. Help us know why you are the team member we should have hired already. (We’ll be more impressed by a thorough LinkedIn profile than a regular CV, by the way.) If you have a blog or Twitter account, let us know – an outward-looking life, online or otherwise, scores extra points. We’ll then have a phone conversation with people we think may be a good fit.

We’re based in Claremont, Cape Town. This will be a contract position for a few months (same as everyone else on the team) at R10 000.00 per month.

When the position is filled, we’ll say so here on this post. Till then, it’s open.

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Update, 5 August 2012: This position has now been filled. Dezre Little starts at Paperight on 6 August. Welcome, Dezre!

Paperight is changing the way people get books, so that we can put every book within walking distance of every home, anywhere. We need a smart, dedicated, energetic, meticulous, super-friendly person to join us by managing our office and keeping our books.

If this is you, you’re likely to have at least a year or two’s experience in a similar role. (For the bookkeeping, a working knowledge of accounting practices will do, if you’re great in other areas, and you’re always learning new stuff.) You’re so inherently organised, meticulous and efficient that you don’t know how to be anything else. And you tend to solve problems before anyone knows they’re there.

You’re also lovely with people, so you’ll be great at fielding emails and calls. Some of these will be customer-support calls for paperight.com, so you’ll be a clear communicator, and super confident with websites and web-based applications already. Everything admin-related could fall to you: from travel arrangements to setting up events to liaising with suppliers and more. If anything will help us move faster, it’s up to you to know it first and make it happen. And when our teams need help with getting important stuff done, you’ll always pitch in.

If you’re this person, we are really looking forward to hearing from you.

Apply by emailing team at paperight dot com. Your email cover letter is much, much more important than your CV. So make it count. Be honest and friendly. Help us know why you are the team member we should have hired already. (We’ll be more impressed by a thorough LinkedIn profile than a regular CV, by the way.) If you have a blog or Twitter account, let us know – an outward-looking life, online or otherwise, scores extra points. We’ll then have a phone conversation or IM chat with people we think may be a good fit.

We’re based in Claremont, Cape Town. This will be a contract position for a few months (same as everyone else on the team). We haven’t decided how much we’ll pay you, because this will depend on your experience, and what energy and expertise you can bring to the team.

When the position is filled, we’ll say so here on this post. Till then, it’s open.

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If you’re a high-achieving individual looking for work experience, think about applying to be an intern at Paperight. We have a lot of work to do, a big vision, and we like teaching people useful stuff. Working with interns, we get more done, you learn about publishing, distribution, technology and a little finance, and the world gets a jillion print-on-demand bookstores.

Depending on your interests and skills, you might work with our content team finding and prepping books for distribution, our outlet team working with printing outlets, or our technology team building state-of-the-art web software. We won’t lie: it’s not glamorous work. But the people are fabulous, the coffee is superb, and we pay you a small but respectable fee. Internships are usually at least two months long.

To apply, email team at paperight dot com. Note: Your cover letter is much, much more important than your CV. You don’t even have to send a CV if you can link to a thorough LinkedIn profile (or something similar). If you have a blog or Twitter account, let us know – an outward-looking life, online or otherwise, scores extra points. We’ll then have a phone conversation with people we think may be a good fit.

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UPDATE, 13 Feb 2012: We’ve renamed this position ‘Customer Relations Manager’ to make it clearer. Our initial title, ‘Outlet Champion’, could be confusing if you don’t know Paperight well yet. Same job, different title. This post has been updated to reflect the change.

UPDATE, 21 March 2012: This position has been filled. We’ll be announcing our new team members on the blog soon.

We need a Customer Relations Manager to sign up new outlets, and to work with outlets to make Paperight truly useful to them. Paperight’s success depends on our outlets: if outlet staff are happy, we’re happy.

Any business or organisation can register as a Paperight outlet. So outlets will include photocopy businesses, NGOs, schools, colleges, libraries and more. The Customer Relations Manager will

travel a lot to meet outlet managers in person

be the first to answer the phone or email when outlets get in touch

collect and analyse outlet feedback and website usage, to teach us how to serve them better

lead the planning and execution of marketing efforts.

And a bunch of other things. We’re a small team with specific goals, and we all contribute to achieving them in ways that can change from day to day.

We’re keen to hear from people who have worked with service-oriented retailers before, ideally in a sales or marketing role. But more importantly, we want to hear from people who believe in our mission: to put every book within walking distance of every home within five years.

This is a contract position for six months that pays R12000/month, with possibility of renewal for a further period. We’ll cover travel expenses too. The office has great coffee and even nicer people.

Apply by emailing:

team [at] paperight [dot] com

Note: Your cover letter is much, much more important than your CV. We want to know about you as a person in the cover letter, a motivation for why you want to work with us. If you have a blog or Twitter account, let us know – an outward-looking life, online or otherwise, scores extra points. We’ll then have a phone conversation with people we think may be a good fit.

There’s no deadline: we’ll update this post when the position’s filled.

We’re assembling a small, flexible, confident team of ambitious hard workers. They’ll be joining me (more about Arthur here) to form Paperight’s first staff complement.

One of them will prepare and organise the documents we deliver on Paperight. We’re calling that person a content manager for now.

We’re just getting going, so this is a four-month contract based in Cape Town, paying between R8000 and R12000 per month. We’ll see how things go from there.

If this is you, you’re likely to be just getting going, career-wise, and have a couple of years’ experience working with book-like documents – anywhere in any field, as long as you’ve learned to be organised, meticulous, efficient, and a consummate problem-solver. We can train you in the technical skills, so what matters more now is how you work and think, and whether we think the same way about being a success and changing the world. At Paperight, we’re setting out to change the way books are distributed in low-income communities. That social mission is as important as our financial one: to be a profitable business that enables other businesses to be profitable.

The content manager will work with rightsholders (publishers, non-profits, educational institutions, etc.) to get their documents onto Paperight. If you already know how to use tools like InDesign and Acrobat Pro, and can batch convert documents and edit basic HTML, you’re well set for the skills part. If you’re already used to working with rightsholders, talking through contracts, solving problems, dealing with uncertainty, and balancing the schlep of detailed legwork with the excitement of big-picture planning, then you’ve probably got the thinking part down too.

If this kind of work sounds interesting, apply by emailing team at paperight dot com. Your cover letter is much, much more important than your CV. In fact, don’t even send a CV if you can just link to a LinkedIn profile or something similar. If you have a blog or Twitter account (about anything at all), let us know – an outward-looking life, online or otherwise, scores extra points. We’ll then have a phone conversation with people we think may be a good fit.

There’s no deadline: we’ll update this post when the position’s filled.